Bakauheni mercury seizure shows supply control at work in small-scale gold mining

Shortly after six in the morning on Thursday, 1 October 2026, officers running a routine passenger vehicle check at the entrance to Bakauheni Ferry Port in South Lampung opened the luggage of an intercity bus passenger and found 61 bottles of a heavy, clear liquid. Each bottle held roughly one kilogram of mercury. None of it came with the licences that the trade in mercury requires.

By Sunday, 4 October, South Lampung Police (Polres Lampung Selatan) had named two suspects and traced the shipment to its intended recipient. The case is small in tonnage. It is large in what it shows: that Indonesia's long effort to take mercury out of small-scale gold mining is increasingly being fought on the supply side, at the checkpoints and crossings through which the metal has to travel.

What the Bakauheni checkpoint found

According to AKP Stefanus R.F.N. Boyoh, head of the criminal investigation unit at South Lampung Police, the inspection was carried out jointly with the Bakauheni Port Police (KSKP Bakauheni) as part of standard screening of passengers crossing from Sumatra to Java. The passenger carrying the bottles, identified as E.K.L., 45, from Deli Serdang in North Sumatra, is alleged to have acted as the courier. Investigators followed the trail to Bogor, West Java, where they detained a second suspect, M., 52, a resident of West Jakarta, who is alleged to have ordered and received the consignment.

Alongside the 61 bottles, police seized 200 printed sticker labels. Their wording leaves little doubt about the intended market. The labels read "Merkuri/HG Spesial for Gold 99,999%", with a net weight of one kilogram and a note that the contents were already "activated" and "ready to use". In other words, the consignment was being prepared for repackaging and onward sale to gold processors.

Both suspects face charges under two laws. Article 161 of Law 3/2020 on Mineral and Coal Mining carries a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to Rp100 billion. Article 106 of Law 7/2014 on Trade carries up to four years in prison or a fine of up to Rp10 billion. ANTARA, Viva Lampung and Helo Indonesia all reported the same core figures on 4 October, and police said the investigation into the wider supply network is continuing.

The labels seized at Bakauheni were printed for one buyer: the gold processor. Every bottle stopped before it reaches an amalgamation drum is a contamination event that never has to be cleaned up.

Mercury, gold and the 2025 milestone

Mercury is used in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (pertambangan emas skala kecil, PESK) because it binds with fine gold particles to form an amalgam that is easy to separate. Heating the amalgam drives off the mercury as vapour, and what is not inhaled settles into soil, rivers and fish. Directorate General officials at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry have long identified PESK as the single largest source of mercury released to the environment in Indonesia.

Indonesia signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury in Kumamoto, Japan, on 10 October 2013 and ratified it through Law 11/2017, enacted on 20 September 2017. Two years later, Presidential Regulation 21/2019 set out the National Action Plan for Mercury Reduction and Elimination (RAN-PPM). Article 4 of that regulation sets sector targets measured against mercury use before the plan existed: 100 percent elimination in health by 2020, 100 percent in small-scale gold mining by 2025, a 50 percent reduction in manufacturing by 2030, and a 33.2 percent reduction in energy by 2030.

The 2025 target year for gold mining has now passed. It was always one of the most ambitious commitments in the plan, because the sector is dispersed, largely informal and spread across many provinces. A 2025 report by Benua.id, citing civil society research, put the number of PESK sites at around 1,200 across 190 districts in 31 of 34 provinces, and estimated annual mercury use for gold extraction at more than 1,500 tonnes. Those are non-government estimates and should be read as such, but they explain why the work now continues beyond the original milestone, and why interrupting supply has become as important as changing practice at the mine.

What already works on the ground

There is solid evidence that mercury-free processing is achievable when miners have access to alternatives and to legal status. Between 2019 and 2022, the GOLD-ISMIA programme, run by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry with UNDP and Global Environment Facility support, worked in six districts: Kuantan Singingi in Riau, North Gorontalo, Kulon Progo in Yogyakarta, West Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, South Halmahera in North Maluku, and North Minahasa in North Sulawesi.

Over roughly three and a half years the programme reduced mercury use by 23 tonnes, according to ANTARA's December 2022 reporting. North Minahasa alone, centred on the villages of Tatelu and Talawaan, contributed 13.4 tonnes, or 58 percent of the total. Miners there increased the number of leaching drums used for mercury-free processing from 30 in 2019 to 81 by 2022. Inilah.com reported that the same programme produced 3.3 tonnes of gold without mercury, helped 54 mining groups gain legal status, and trained 2,935 miners. ANTARA rounded the training figure to around 3,000 miners and local officials, and 14 regional action plans were set up across provinces and districts.

These results matter for reading the Bakauheni case. Demand-side programmes give miners a viable way to produce gold without mercury. Supply-side enforcement makes the old way harder and more expensive. The two work best together, and the South Lampung seizure is a visible example of the second half of that equation functioning as intended.

Putting a value on the mercury that never arrived

For Sirkularium's audience, the most useful question about 61 kilograms of seized mercury is not how dramatic it sounds, but what it is worth to have stopped it. Indonesia already has the regulatory tool to answer that question. Minister of Environment Regulation 7/2014, in force since 17 October 2014, sets out how to calculate environmental loss from pollution or damage. It separates ecological damage, environmental economic loss and the cost of recovery, and it has been used in courts to put a rupiah figure on harm.

Applied to mercury in gold mining, the same method can be run in two directions. Looking backward, it can value contamination already present at a mining site: the cost of remediating mercury-laden tailings and sediment, the loss of fishery and agricultural output from affected rivers, and the health burden on nearby communities. Mongabay Indonesia, citing World Bank and Nexus3 research from 2019, reported that around 75 percent of adult workers tested in PESK supply chains had mercury levels above safe limits. Looking forward, the same method can estimate the avoided loss when a consignment is intercepted before use. That second calculation is rarely made, yet it is exactly what turns enforcement from a cost line into a measurable public return.

Interdiction, formalisation and valuation belong in the same ledger. A seized kilogram of mercury is a recovery cost that the state, the community and the operator never have to pay.

This framing also helps formal operators. Licensed gold miners and processors that have invested in mercury-free methods can document their environmental performance using GIS mapping of their footprint, water and sediment sampling, and a Permen LH 7/2014 style valuation. That record distinguishes them clearly from the informal supply chains that enforcement cases like Bakauheni are designed to close.

Sirkularium's view

The Bakauheni seizure is a constructive signal. Routine screening at a strategic crossing between Sumatra and Java identified a consignment, investigators moved quickly from the courier to the recipient, and charges were brought under both the Mining Law and the Trade Law. That is the supply chain for mercury being treated as a supply chain, not as a series of isolated parcels.

For government and public institutions, Sirkularium sees three practical next steps. First, continue to pair enforcement data with RAN-PPM monitoring, so that seizures at ports and checkpoints are recorded as part of national mercury accounting rather than only as criminal cases. Second, extend the GOLD-ISMIA model of mercury-free processing and group legalisation to more of the districts where PESK is concentrated, so that miners who lose access to mercury have a ready alternative. Third, adopt economic valuation under Permen LH 7/2014 as routine practice for mercury-affected mining areas, combining GIS and remote sensing with ground sampling, so that both remediation needs and the avoided loss from interdiction are expressed in rupiah.

For mining operators, the message is similar. Commissioning rigorous, independently verified valuation of ecosystem services and environmental condition, before any dispute arises, gives a company a defensible account to present to the Ministry of Environment and to regional agencies. What to watch next is whether the South Lampung investigation identifies the wider distribution network behind the "ready to use" labels, and how the 2025 PESK milestone is carried forward in the next phase of the national action plan.